Ratings of doctors: Five stars for Consumer Reports

When I choose a car, I do my homework carefully, as my family's lives will depend on the decision.  I'm easily able to find the ratings of thousands of consumers, on a dozen dimensions, via Consumer Reports' well-known five-star rating system.  

However, I've been unable to do my due diligence, and have been frustrated, in making a different high-stakes decision, that of helping my mother find a doctor in Atlanta.  Each of several rating organizations posts only a handful of consumers' ratings, if any, of a given physician.   

Maybe there's hope now, at least for consumers of medical services in Massachusetts.  In today's Boston Globe, Chelsea Conaboy described a new resource for patients in Massachusetts, courtesy of Consumer Reports and Massachusetts Health Quality Partners.  Beginning today, they're posting ratings of almost 500 physician practices that each had at least 50 patient surveys.  

MHQP has been posting physician ratings for several years.  Barbra Rabson, the head of MHQP, said the average physician practice has improved its ratings since 2009.  Such reporting is a powerful stimulus toward improvement.

Kudos to Consumer Reports!

And, can we fantasize that someday we'll have pricing information, too?

Read the chapter on choosing a doctor in Getting Your Best Health Care:  Real-World Stories for Patient Empowerment.

There was nothing wrong with me: Unnecessary triple bypass surgery

Ron Spurgeon's health began to unravel when he hurt his shoulder doing yard work. He eventually wound up at a hospital in northern California, where a cardiologist told him he had a life-threatening heart condition. Four days later, he had triple bypass surgery.

Restrictions on heavy lifting as a consequence of the incision in his breastbone led the robust 56-year-old to give up his job maintaining machinery at lumber mills.

In 2003, two years after his operation, Ron learned that Tenet Healthcare, the hospital's owner, had paid $54 million to settle U.S. government allegations that it billed Medicare for unnecessary heart procedures. The next year, Ron and 344 others sued the hospital and eight cardiologists and surgeons for performing unnecessary procedures. The defendants ultimately paid $442 million to settle the suit, and Tenet says safeguards are now in place. Outside experts who reviewed patient charts determined that Ron was among the many patients who hadn't needed their procedures.

"There was nothing wrong with me," he says. "Those guys violated me. They took away my trust in doctors."

Advice: Ask your doctor beforehand what the medical research says is the likely result of your surgery.


Read another unnecessary surgery story, or read Consumer Reports' source story.

Thanks, Helen Haskell.